ABCDEFGHI

Meriç Algün Ringborg, Magnus Bärtås, Kay Rosen and Mladen Stilinović

The exhibition ABCDEFGHI presents works by four artists who all share an interest in the linguistic. The first nine letters of the alphabet would not signify much were it not for the fact that the final two letters appear in a different colour and form the word HI. The title of the exhibition, which is a work by the American artist Kay Rosen, is a greeting as well as an invitation to look closer at language and the ability of words to assume various functions, meanings and behaviours, as conveyors, generators, signs and images.

Kay Rosen, Meriç Algün Ringborg, Magnus Bärtås and Mladen Stilinović work in different geographic contexts, have different native tongues but all use language as method, form and image in order to direct our attention to its impact on our way of speaking, thinking, reading, communicating and perceiving the world. With small additions, emphases and dislocations, their works open up our way of observing and comprehending things which we perhaps otherwise would not have noticed, and give equal prominence to misreadings and misunderstandings as to precision and exactitude.